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the caste system was transformed and consolidated into being a far more rigid and
bounded institution because of colonial rule and interpretation than it was in the pre-
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colonial times. On the other hand, ‘tradition’ is often invented to suit present political
requirements than a thing of the past.
There are numerous other scholars currently working in postcolonial criticism; however,
the genesis of the field is largely represented by these three exponents in the late-20th
century.
The concept of fixed boundaries and timeless entities has now been replaced by the far
more dynamic concept of ‘identity’ that includes the possibility of change, negotiation
and contestation. For example, it has been shown that the caste system, far from being a
rigid and defined system, is fluid, where one category may lay claim to a higher status or
challenge the status of another group, or invent a new status for itself. In the present
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day, many castes who laid claim to high status demand to be included in OBC or SC
category.
In anthropology more specifically, postcolonialism has two main thrusts: First, again at
the epistemological level, it challenges anthropological research in “other” cultures,
attacking both the authority of anthropologists to speak for other cultures and
essentialist descriptions of those cultures. Postcolonial preferences in reporting on other
cultures would be for an emphasis on “voices” of the subjects themselves; that is, instead
of commentary and analysis by the anthropologist, ethnographic reports would consist
of comments and commentaries by the “natives.”
Second, at the level of social and historical analysis, anthropologists of postcolonial bent
would de-emphasize focus on characteristics of the local or regional indigenous culture,
and instead analyze the ways in which European imperial and colonial power distorted
and corrupted indigenous culture, and exploited and oppressed imperial and colonial
“subjects.” In postcolonial analysis, culture and social organization that may at first
appear to be indigenous, and above all social and cultural problems, whether in
economics, politics, human relations, gender relations, human rights, and so on, can be
traced to externally imposed imperial and colonial impositions.
Perhaps the most important postcolonialist influence on anthropology has been Edward
Said’s Orientalism. Said, a professor of English at Columbia University, argued that
Oriental Studies, the field of historical, literary, and cultural examination of the Middle
East, consisted not so much of dispassionate, reasoned, objective understandings of the
Middle East, but rather a set of fantasy projections, distorted disparagements, and
demeaning misrepresentations, the real purpose of which was not to understand the
Middle East, but to justify and encourage European conquest, oppression, and
exploitation of the Middle East and its peoples. From this perspective, any critical
comment directed toward the Middle East can thus be dismissed as “Orientalism.”
Said’s critics argue that Said violated his own strictures in his account of Oriental
Studies, and accuse him of “Occidentalism.” Said, from a privileged family of Palestinian
origin residing in Egypt, presented himself as a Palestinian refugee and adopted the

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